Think for a bit about times in recent memory when you felt attractive or sexy. What were you doing? What was your body doing or feeling? Sometimes we imagine we will feel more attractive when we are dressed up, going out, being seen. But think for yourself, maybe you remember feeling vibrant and attractice when you are home alone dancing to music, sitting on your porch eating lunch in the sun, or at work giving a presentation. What are you wearing when you feel attractive? Who are you with? What people invite you to feel sexy and appealing? Why do you open up this part of yourself when you are with them? How do you see yourself through their eyes? Write about some of these times, recall the details, remind yourself what was going on for you in those moments. And then answer thsi question - what is it in those times that allows you to open to your own beauty or sex appeal or confidance?

As a New Year's resolution, you may decide to consciously create more times like that in your days and weeks. How can you build more space for yourself to feel attractive. It is not about waiting until you have lost weight or developed your pecs or erased your wrinkles. It is about knowing how to bring sexiness and attraction out in yourself and being your best, most confidant self now.

On December 6th, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints published new website opening up a new kinder conversation around homosexuality than they have been known for I the past. Their key statement reads,

“The experience of same-sex attraction is a complex reality for many people. The attraction itself is not a sin, but acting on it is. Even though individuals do not choose to have such attractions, they do choose how to respond to them. With love and understanding, the Church reaches out to all God’s children, including our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.”

Even though this may not be all we could hope for in terms of acceptance of homosexuality as a natural and healthy part of human sexual expression and identity, it is a huge step. For the church to acknowledge that study after study, and story after story, have shown that sexual orientation is not a choice but rather an innate part of each of us, changes how society must respond. To honor that a person is born loving who they love and attracted to who they are attracted to, then to persecute them for the qualities they were born with (one could say qualities that are“god given”) is unfair and unkind. I have heard this from Catholic priests when I was in Uganda who told me directly, “if we come to believe that homosexuality is a part of the person when they are born, we will have to treat them differently. This would fundamentally change how we see this issue”.

Now the new statement by the Mormon church, will not affect Catholics in Uganda, nor is it necessarily going to stop the church from trying to limit homosexual freedoms or rights for gay and lesbian couples. But it will require a new approach, it will validate the experience of the many gay and lesbian people who know, for them, love and desire is not a lifestyle choice. And it does call for love and understanding; that is a big step.

You sit with friends at a café, everyone joking about sex and their partners, and you think, “there is no way I am telling them how I really feel”. You are lying next to your partner, relaxed after a slow morning in bed together, when you have a memory from a past sexual experience but decide not to share it. You are around a dinner table with your family and your mom makes an assumption about your sex life that is not true, but you don’t feel safe correcting her. You are passionately petting with a new partner, who gasps, “we don’t need to use protection, don’t worry”. Nagging thoughts about the risky sexual behaviors in your past stay with you, but you keep quiet.

Our sexual stories often contain both secrets and privacy and the need to make decisions about both. What is the difference between something you want to keep private and a secret you are keeping? How do you decide when to keep information to yourself and what is important to share? Is it ok to keep sexual information to yourself? How much do you need to share with partners?

Secrets often feel bad. We usually keep secrets about information that we are ashamed of or feel could still hurt us in some way. Secrets sometimes have the quality of withholding information that may be relevant to another person, and so they can feel hard to keep and dangerous. Secrets feel like a burden; they hold us back and weigh us down.

Privacy, on the other hand, can feel empowering . It can apply to information about yourself that is new or vulnerable and that you are still learning about, so it is not ready to be shared. Privacy feels like a choice. Things that you choose to keep private may cause you to smile to yourself. Privacy relates to things that you may feel you could share, but is just no one’s business but your own. Privacy is space you give yourself.

So how do you decide if this information is something you should share? Decide if it is currently relevant to the person you might share it with – will it impact the decisions they may make? Will not knowing this put them at risk in any way? Then decide how it is impacting your ability to feel intimate with this person. By not telling, do you feel like you are hiding a significant part of yourself, do you feel you are constantly holding yourself back? Are you thinking about it a lot, distracted by it? If no, then maybe this is something that you choose to keep private. It is not bad to have memories, fantasies, curiosities, that are just for you. Maybe someday you will share but if for now you feel happy holding this inside, let it feed the way you are with your partner and in the world, privately.

In my practice, I talk to many people who are considering asking their partner about changing their relationship agreements from monogamy to an open relationship. This can be a fragile, vulnerable, exciting, insightful time for people and there is much to explore. I will be writing a series of articles about what to ask yourself, how to approach a partner, and things to consider before opening a relationship to multiple partners. This article, posted on YourTango.com, outlines some questions to ask yourself before you even begin a conversation with your current partner.

Melissa Fritchle is the author of The Conscious Sexual Self Workbook and a Holistic Psychotherapist, licensed in California as a Marriage and Family Therapist (Lic#48627). She has a private practice specializing in Sex Therapy and Couples Therapy. She travels far and wide, internationally and on the internet, to spread compassionate, sex positive, diverse, realistic sex education.